LAS PAUTAS

Alcoff and other feminist theorists understand knowledge as “communal, historical, and contingent.”76 _{The knower is not a disembodied individual, but part of a community.}

While researching drag kings and feminist methodologies, drag performances immediately struck me as being not only “communal,” but also pedagogical, knowledge-producing and knowledge-sharing. Troka77 _{frames a drag king community as a collective of knowers,}

where individuals come together informally with common goals (e.g., to perform, educate, entertain and share knowledge). Nelson holds that communities, rather than individuals, are the producers, translators, and conduits of knowledge. She writes, “[I]t is communities that construct and acquire knowledge” and should therefore be recognized as the “agents of epistemology.”78

As important as communal/collective action has been to activism, it is Potter’s contention that scholars must “begin to view the community as comprised of epistemically

interdependent individuals [my emphasis].”79 _{To that end, my research focuses on the lived}

experiences of individuals, who of course live among and learn with others. Specifically, how does the individual drag king learn how to perform in drag, what kind of knowledge

76 _{Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies (New York: Routledge, 1993), 8.} 77 _{Troka, “The Kings of the Midwest: An Oral History of Three Midwestern Drag King Troupes”.} 78 _{Lynn H. Nelson, “"Epistemological Communities,” in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Linda Alcoff and}

Elizabeth Potter (New York: Routledge, 1993), 123.

79 _{Elizabeth Potter, “Gender and Epistemic Negotiation,” in Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, eds.,}

do they share with others in the community, and how are those knowledges created and circulated?

When utilizing the idea of epistemological communities, Alcoff and other theorists are referring to the production of formal “scientific knowledge,” i.e., “hard” science such as physics and chemistry and the ways in which individuals work together in formal educational (e.g., university laboratories) environments to produce theories of physical phenomena, which are then circulated as fact. Although these scholars contend that any adequate theory of what is known and how it is known must account for knowledge in social terms,80 _{they seem to give interpretations of informal, less institutional communities}

short shrift.

In scholarly research, the term “community” can be less than transparent, and indeed, entire books are devoted to the meanings of community. 81 _{For the purposes of this}

paper, I use the phrase “knowledge community” or “community of practice” to describe a group whose members are oriented toward certain outcomes – namely, to introduce change into a system by identifying, creating, representing, or distributing information and/or knowledge via a community context within or between populations. Knowledge

communities are where ideas are exchanged on an ongoing basis, and learning in such a community is fluid, open, and public. I find this concept useful for exploring the

pedagogical work of drag kings. The gender performance in drag identifies the ways in which a “system” – the rigid gender binary of male/female – is oppressive.

80 _{See Alcoff and Potter, Feminist Epistemologies.}

81 _{As pointed out in Valentine’s book, the term “community” is ambiguous and can be best thought of in the}

sense of an “imagined community” of individuals with shared interests. Jenny Lo and Theresa Healy, “Flagrantly Flaunting It?: Contesting Perceptions of Locational Identity Among Urban Vancouver Lesbians, in From Nowhere to Everywhere: Lesbian Geographies, Valentine, ed., 33.

Specifically, I frame drag king performers (and their audiences) as communities of practice that produce and circulate knowledge and contribute to important learnings and unlearning on gender and social and cultural possibilities. Using drag kings’ narratives, I look at what drag performers learn, unlearn, teach, and “know” through performing for and with others. Such scrutiny calls into question what each of us knows about gender, and how each of us experiences (and indeed, reinforces) the normalizing aspects of gender identities. The ways in which individuals function within an informal community is an aspect I explore in my empirical research by investigating how drag kings produce and share knowledge about doing drag. Thinking about drag performers in terms of communities of knowers helps frame the question: What kind of knowledges and practices do drag kings generate and circulate? What do they learn, unlearn, and/or relearn? What do these

knowledges do for them? As I demonstrate in the following review of my methodology, an important and viable starting point in studying the lived experiences of drag kings is through interviews that elicit life stories or narratives. In the spirit of the bricoleur, I enrich these narratives by placing them into conversation with other texts and artifacts, as well as with observations. Following the discussion of methodologies, I introduce each participant, Chris, Sera, Lucy, and Smith, with a brief biographical sketch and “scene” from each drag king’s performance.

Interviews

My research population consists of four drag king performers. I followed Cole and Knowles’82 _{description of a life story investigation as involving interviews (or a series of}

interviews) that typically last from about one to two hours. I prompted each participant to “tell me about performing in drag,” which solicited narratives about discovering a drag community and the thought processes that led them to participate in the community. Participants shared stories about how they became involved with drag performance, a description of a typical performance, how performing has affected the king’s everyday life, and what they have unlearned and learned from performing in drag.

In choosing my interview participants, I initially approached several drag kings after shows in various venues and invited them to participate in my study. As a “recruiting tool,” I handed out professionally printed business cards that read: Looking for a few good men … Wanted: kings, boiz, trannies, butches, girl fags, and other sundry genderfuckers.

My contact information was also printed on the cards. Three immediately agreed to participate, one of whom ended up not participating in the interviews due to health problems. I found two additional participants by word-of-mouth through friends and acquaintances. The participants were over twenty-one years of age. I did not choose to

82 _{Ardra L. Cole and J. Gary Knowles, Lives in Context: The Art of Life History Research (Walnut Creek,}

CA: AltaMira, 2001). Cole and Knowles and other historians refer to their research as “life history.” Although I utilize the methods of life history research, mainly lengthy interviews, I did not solicit a “history” of my participants’ lives. Rather, I asked for stories of their drag kinging experiences. I

acknowledge that all narratives of experiences after the fact could be considered histories, but I in no way consider myself a historian. Because the narratives my interviewees provided are specific to drag kinging, and not to their life histories writ large, I refer to participants’ stories as life stories, narratives, and/or drag king narratives. The participants revealed very little information about their backgrounds and childhoods, for example, unless it seemed to them to directly relate to their drag kinging experiences. For instance, when discussing what it was like to dress in men’s clothing for the purpose of kinging, two participants told stories about how they had always preferred boys’ or men’s clothing. Because of the historical detail that she provides, I do refer to Chris’ description of “becoming a drag king” as an oral history. However, in the interview, I did not specifically ask for a history. Rather, my goal was to solicit a story: “Tell me about your experience doing drag.” Although I found Cole and Knowles’ scholarship to be most useful to my project, doing a “proper” life history of four individuals was not the goal of my research. In the spirit of bricolage, I used “fragments” of life history methods, blending them with others.

study people under twenty-one years of age because my observational research took place in establishments that by law can only serve patrons over twenty-one. I explained to participants the purpose of my research and what participation entailed. Participants signed appropriate consent forms.

I digitally recorded and transcribed each interview word for word, and I took notes during the interviews to record nonverbal communication and other aspects of the

interview that could not be captured in the audio recording. I coded the interviews

thematically to interpret the data, find similarities and differences, discover links across the data, and then shape the organization of sections or chapters.83 _{I use pseudonyms for each}

drag performer, troupe, and venue (bars and clubs), and other significant identifiers (biographical details). The only names that I did not change were the celebrity drag kings Mo B. Dick and Murray Hill, and their drag venues, as mentioned in Chris’ narrative.

Storytelling

I chose a storytelling approach in order to understand how participants describe, interpret, and make meaning of their experiences as drag kings. Stories can be an important source of information about the contexts that people find significant in their daily and special activities, in the framing of their lives, and in the ways in which they make sense of their experiences. Naples points out that researchers frequently draw on biographical narrative or life story approaches to gain “understanding of the historical and cultural experiences that shape personal and interpersonal relationships.”84 _{She contends that in-}

83 _{The digitally recorded files and transcriptions are kept on my personal computer and secured via}

passwords to which I have sole access. I created pseudonyms for each participant the key to which was kept on my personal computer and secured via a password.

84 _{Nancy A. Naples, Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research (New}

depth interviews can generate focused narratives of key events in a person’s life through a reconstruction of experiences.

However, Naples and other life story scholars point out that narratives should not be taken up unproblematically. A story or narrative tells something about the relationship between the individual and society, and individuals have multiple subject positions from which they make sense of the world.85 _{In other words, because the participants are}

positioned in a number of different discourses, they are likely to construct a number of narratives. Furthermore, during an interview a person constructs her or his experiences into a story that is meaningful, and the construction is influenced by her interaction with the interviewer. As Biott puts it, each story is positioned and presented from the perspective of someone with certain intentions at a specific moment in historical time.86 _{Furthermore, in}

line with Clandinin and Connelly, I am aware that the way an interviewer “acts, questions, and responds in an interview shapes the relationship and therefore the ways participants respond”87 _{and tell their stories.}

Kvale states that the function of conversational interview is a basic mode of knowing and understanding human reality. He describes the conversational interview as a “technique in which knowledge is constructed through the interaction [between]

interviewer and interviewee.”88 _{According to Kvale, the main focus of the interview is “to}

understand the themes of the lived daily world from the subjects’ own perspective.”89

Hammersley and Atkinson describe interviews as close in character to conversations;

85 _{Colin Biott, Lejf Moos, and Jorunn Moller, “Studying Headteachers' Professional Lives: Getting the Life}

History,” Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 45, no. 4 (2001).

86 _Ibid.

87 _{D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 110.} 88 _{Steinar Kvale, InterViews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing (Thousand Oaks: Sage,}

1996), 36.

however, they are never simply conversations, because the researcher has an “agenda and must retain some control over the proceedings.”90 _{I was guided by their suggestion that the}

researcher must “listen to what is being said in order to assess how it relates to the research focus and how it may reflect the circumstances of the interview. Moreover, this is done with a view to how the future course of the interview might be shaped.”91

Kvale suggests several indicators of quality for an interview, including:

spontaneous, rich, specific, and relevant answers from the interviewee; short interviewer questions and long participant answers; and follow-up and clarification of the meanings of the relevant aspects by the interviewer. Furthermore, he concludes that the ideal interview is to a large extent interpreted throughout the interview; the interviewer attempts to verify her interpretations of the participants’ answers throughout the course of the interview. I found that it takes a high level of experience to learn to clarify participants’ meanings during an interview without asking leading questions. I aimed to clarify participants’ responses by asking them to “Tell me more about _____.”

As discussed in the following section, I chose to put these stories into play with other texts, such as popular cultural artifacts and solicited objects. Throughout the research process, I asked questions, gathered data, and posed further questions. An ongoing analysis of interviews, data, and literature allowed deep reflection and meaning-making during the research process, reflecting my views that knowledge and research are an ongoing process, rather than culminating in some final “truth.”

A storytelling approach to research attempts to make sense of how the storyteller remembers events and how she relates to those events (and relates events to one another).

90 _{Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography: Principles and Practice, Second ed. (New York:}

Routledge, 1995), 152.

In a study of drag king communities, stories are a springboard to understanding how participants construct, understand, and interpret their performances and practices, both onstage and off. Using storytelling as a method is congruent with my views of knowledge and research. According to Creswell, when deciding which research methods are most useful to one’s research questions, one must consider the following: what knowledge claims are being made; what strategies of inquiry will inform the procedures; and what methods of data collection and analysis will be used.92 _{I utilized a feminist and postmodern}

framework for this study that matches my views of knowledge and research — namely, that human experiences and knowledges are subjective and multiple,93 _{that “truth” is}

constructed in relations of power between the researcher and participant, and that the relationship between the researcher and participants is collaborative. I am interested in the subjective meanings that individuals make of their experiences, the understandings they seek, and the ways they “story” the worlds in which they live. It is my contention that this theoretical framework is useful to a study with a drag king community, a population that I perceive as self-consciously resisting a stable notion of gender identity and practice.94

A postmodernist framework places under scrutiny taken-for-granted assumptions of truth and knowledge: for example, whose knowledge is being recognized, and for what purposes?95 _{Human identities are of course not monolithic, even within certain}

communities or subgroups. Therefore, in the context of my research questions, participants’

92 _{John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, Second}

ed. (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003), 5.

93 _{Margaret Eisenhart, “Educational Ethnography Past, Present, and Future: Ideas to Think With,”}

Educational Researcher 30, no. 8 (2001), 17.

94 _{A number of drag scholars, including Halberstam, argue this point. See, for instance, Halberstam,}

“Gender, Race, and Masculinity in the Drag King Scene,” Halberstam, Female Masculinity, Halberstam, “Oh Behave! Austin Powers and the Drag Kings,” Halberstam and Roseneil, “Speaking of Sexuality and Subcultures: A Conversation with Judith Halberstam.”

95 _{See, for example, St. Pierre, “’Science’ Rejects Postmodernism,” Elizabeth A. and Pillow St. Pierre,}

Wanda S., ed., Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural Theory and Methods in Education (New York: Routledge, 2000).

experiences and practices are best explored through methods that allow for the

investigation of multiplicities and complexities of human lives. Although I elicit personal narratives and stories as a main source of data, I am sensitive to Olesen’s contention that “personal experience is not a self-authenticating claim to knowledge.”96 _{Furthermore, I am}

also sympathetic to the poststructural notion that all research is fiction. As Talburt puts it, qualitative inquiry

is fiction, in the sense that it is made or constructed, but not in the sense that it is pure invention, lies, or imaginings. In other words, qualitative inquiry has a grounding in “real” events and “real” lives, but learning about and representing events and lives is a process of constructing others’ constructions of the constructions of the world.97

Similarly, Olesen suggests that postmodern feminist researchers regard truth as a destructive illusion, “destabilizing the feminist researcher as an all-knowing, unified, distanced, and context-free seeker of objectified knowledge whose very gender guarantees access to women’s lives and knowledges.”98 _{In other words, researchers should recognize}

that their knowledges (and the knowledges of their participants) are multiple, fragmented, and constructed. As Haraway points out, a feminist, postmodern methodology opens up possibilities to recognize contingent (local, situated, and partial) ways of knowing. 99 _A

partial perspective of knowing and learning concerns “limited location[s] and situated knowledge[s].”100 _{This way of thinking recognizes a non-unified, multiple self that is able}

to interrogate its “positionings.”101

96 _{Virginia Olesen, “Early Millennial Feminist Qualitative Research,” in The Sage Handbook of Qualitative}

Research, ed. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (London: Sage Publication, 2005).

97 _{Susan Talburt, “Ethnographic Responsibility without The ‘Real,’” Journal of Higher Education 75, no.}

January/February (2004), 81.

98 _{Olesen, 248.}

99 _{Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial}

Perspective," Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988).

100 _{Ibid. 583.} 101 _{Ibid. 586.}

Positionality of the Researcher/Ethics

Another aspect of postmodern research asks the researcher to consider questions of authority and the relationship of knowledge and power, to “tackle the fundamental

questions of how and where knowledge is produced and by whom, and of what counts as knowledge.”102 _{In line with much feminist research, I viewed my participants as co-}

researchers, which to me means that research is a conversation, a dialogue, in which researcher and participant can and should learn and unlearn from one another. I wanted for my participants to learn about their own subject positions, identities, and performances through participating in the interview process because storytelling provides a space for their own self-identification and exploration of their lives and practices. Following Lather’s suggestion, researchers should position themselves not as masters of truth and justice but as creators of a space where those directly involved can act and speak on their own behalf,103

making meaning of their everyday struggles.

I recognize that my research led participants to reveal personal information about themselves. Although all research has the potential to subjugate participants, and especially research that might generate data dealing with gender identities and sexualities, I took care not to reveal data that might seem exploitative. For example, from my informal talks with